Tag Archives: Saddam Hussein

Reassessing the Saudi-led Intervention in Yemen

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 24, 2015

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The Saudi-led Operation DECISIVE STORM began in Yemen on March 25 as a campaign of airstrikes against the Iran-backed Houthis, to weaken them and re-install the president, Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who was overthrown by the Houthis last September.

In April, I wrote in support of the Saudi-led operation for: (1) having drawn a line against Iran’s imperialism after Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq; (2) potentially decreasing the growth of the Islamic State (ISIS) by providing Sunnis, in Yemen and beyond, with an alternative form of resistance to Iran’s encroachments; and (3) offering a chance for more stability in Yemen, which was then in free fall with Iran, al-Qaeda, and ISIS capitalizing on the chaos. Continue reading →

Demise of an ex-Saddamist in Libya

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 21, 2015

Abu Nabil al-Anbari

Abu Nabil al-Anbari

An Islamic State (ISIS) commander was killed in Libya in mid-June, The Daily Beast reported yesterday, after being “paraded … through the streets amid the taunts of onlookers, and then walked … to a gallows, where he was hanged.” [SEE UPDATES] This occurred in the eastern city of Derna, long a hotbed of Islamic militancy. The crucial thing about the “executed” ISIS operative is that he was an Iraqi and an FRE—a former (Saddam) regime element—who had been dispatched to Libya last year to oversee the cultivation of an ISIS branch.

Continue reading →

Saddam’s Henchmen Were Fanatics Long Before They Joined The Islamic State

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 20, 2015

Published at National Review

After long neglect, the media has finally recognized the role of the FREs—former (Saddam) regime elements—within the Islamic State (ISIS). But the pendulum has now swung too far: Some reports are now claiming that the FREs have transformed the leader of the terror army, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, into nothing more than a front man for the Baathists.

These suppositions are mistaken. Most FREs within ISIS have not been ideologically Baathists for a long time. Continue reading →

Islamic State: The Afterlife of Saddam Hussein’s Regime

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 4, 2015

Published at Baghdad Invest

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Izzat Ibrahim ad-Douri, Saddam Hussein’s long-time deputy, was reported dead (again) on April 17. An audio message on May 15 disproved this. Douri was the implementer of the Saddam regime’s Islamization program in its later years and a key architect of the insurgency after the regime was overthrown, which helped pave the way for the Islamic State (ISIS). ISIS has now turned on Douri and his associates, but ISIS could not have risen to its current stature without Douri’s help. Continue reading →

Saddam and the Taliban

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on June 29, 2015

Alleged photograph of Mullah Omar. Other photos are very rare

Alleged photograph of Mullah Omar. Other photos are very rare

In examining the Saddam Hussein regime’s long relationship with al-Qaeda, a noticeable sub-theme is the connections the Saddam regime had with the Taliban theocracy in Afghanistan. The evidence accumulated suggests that Saddam’s policies in his later years, namely the Islamization of his own regime and instrumentalization of Islamists in foreign policy, included welcoming relations with the Taliban. Continue reading →

A Postscript on the Relationship Between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on June 26, 2015

Osama bin Laden (L) and Ayman az-Zawahiri (R)

Osama bin Laden (L) and Ayman az-Zawahiri (R)

The myth that Saddam Hussein’s regime had nothing to do with al-Qaeda is persistent. Stephen Hayes’ book, The Connection, ably debunks this notion. There are some additional details that one can add to this. Continue reading →

A Myth Revisited: “Saddam Hussein Had No Connection To Al-Qaeda”

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Book Review: The Connection: How al-Qaeda’s Collaboration With Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America (2004) by Stephen Hayes

By Kyle Orton(@KyleWOrton) on June 21, 2015

 

More than twelve years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the conventional wisdom is that Saddam’s regime had no connection with al-Qaeda, and such “evidence” as was adduced was tortured out of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi in the Bush administration’s desperation to cobble together a casus belli. But if one puts ideology on hold, and considers the evidence of Stephen Hayes’ The Connection, a rather different picture emerges. Continue reading →

The Dangerous Idea That Iran is a Force for Stability in the Middle East

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on June 5, 2015 1 In the Guardian this morning, Jonathan Steele has written an article defending President Barack Obama’s Iran policy. Steele allows others to make his points for him, but he contributes to a narrative in which rapprochement with Iran is a worthy policy—even as the President formally denies that the Iran negotiations are about anything other than the nuclear-weapons program. Steele writes:

In Iraq, [Iranian officials] insist, Iran is a force for stability, helping [Iraqi prime minister] Haider al-Abadi’s government militarily while urging it to be more attentive to Sunni concerns—just as Washington is.

This is nonsense. In 2008, after the US ‘surge’, violence in Iraq was down 90 per cent, and the political process had begun to work. This was achieved by separating the Sunni Arab tribes of western Iraq from al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM), the forerunner to the Islamic State (ISIS).

Continue reading →

Obama’s Iran Deal Increases Nukes, Terrorism, and Instability

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on April 28, 2015

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The key thing to understand about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear accord announced on April 2 between the P5+1 and Iran, is that it does not exist. The British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said at one point, “We envisage being able to deliver a narrative,” adding that this might not be written and—these being forgiving times—Iran’s narrative need not match the West’s. In other words, nothing was signed or agreed to. This is the reason for the wild discrepancies between the American and Iranian JCPOA “factsheets”: both are drawing from a rolling text that is ostensibly to lead to a “final” or “comprehensive” deal and spinning it to their own respective advantage. The administration has as much as said so with its mantra that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”.

The purpose of the announcement of the JCPOA therefore was, charitably, to “build political momentum toward a final agreement“. Less charitably it was intended to “demonstrate progress in order to fend off congressional action,” as Obama’s former nuclear adviser Gary Samore put it. In that at least it was successful. Continue reading →

Saddam Hussein’s Regime Produced The Islamic State

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on April 21, 2015

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Having presented the evidence that Saddam Hussein Islamized his foreign policy and then Islamized his regime, above all with the Islamic Faith Campaign, beginning in June 1993 that tried to fuse Ba’athism with Salafism, encouraging (and keeping under surveillance) a religious revival in Iraq that redounded to the benefit of the regime’s legitimacy and support, I wanted to look at what this history means for Iraq and the wider region now.

I pointed out in October that the “military strength” of the Islamic State (ISIS) “comes from the remnants of Saddam Hussein’s military-intelligence apparatus and the Caucasus’ Salafi-jihadists.” Continue reading →